Consumers in Latin America, as well as around the globe, hardly go anywhere without their phones these days. Mobile enables millions of consumers to lead a more connected life – allowing them to do many activities that weren’t possible before.

At MasterCard, our goal is to develop technologies that allow consumers to pay seamlessly and safely, reflecting the reality and demands of today’s world. This includes being able to pay from any type of device — including mobile — through our various platforms and services.

Through our MasterPass digital wallet, Brazilians are using their phones and other connected devices to store all their cards’ information in one place, and enjoy checkout shortcuts with just a click, tap or touch. In Colombia, our innovative payment solutions are allowing consumers to seamlessly connect with taxi drivers to request and pay for a ride directly through their phones – no more standing in the street and hailing cabs.

In other markets, mobile phone usage is more prevalent than consumers with bank accounts, so the opportunity to promote financial inclusion is especially relevant. Through our joint venture with Telefonica and mobile solutions likeTu Dinero Movil, we are enabling people to use their cell phones to open accounts, transfer funds, and pay for bills without using cash… all simple actions that many of us take for granted, but that make an enormous difference in the lives of people in developing communities.

Consumers are not the only ones benefiting from mobile technology. Around the region, more and more small businesses and retailers that were previously “cash-only” are using their phones to accept payments thanks to our innovative mobile acceptance solutions and partnerships. This in turn, is helping them increase sales and make long check-out lines a thing of the past.

Moving forward, we will continue to evolve our mobile technology to empower consumers and retailers alike, and enable a world that is not just beyond cash, but also, plastic. With the rise in the adoption of mobile devices, and their transformation in the way that consumers shop and pay for things, we realize that today, more than ever, mobile technology is a key driver in realizing this vision.

In the past, when you wanted to be a spontaneous shopper, you carried around a billfold or a purse full of cash. You spied a delicious treat or that perfect addition to the kitchen, you peeled off your bills to pay the price, and then you walked away with your prize.

But all that is changing.

Mobile payments are on the rise in Latin America. In key locations, the use of mobile is not only burgeoning, the rates of mobile-commerce expansion — starting from small bases of early adopters — are large and getting larger.

Corporations looking for a lasting m-commerce connection are paying attention as well. The push to put a buy-button into app and web users’ smartphones and tablets throughout Latin America has begun.

To further understand what’s happening in countries across Latin America, let’s turn to experts and data. We’ll break down 5 reasons why Latin American is embracing mobile, including: how m-commerce is working, where it’s growing fastest, and what m-commerce means for consumers and businesses throughout the region.

1. Latin America is embracing mobile payments

Mobile payments are growing as a go-to tool for Latin American consumers. That’s no surprise. The industry is courting the countries, one by one.

As a result, buyers and sellers are poised to play new roles in how we think and act about the marketplace — whether it’s a favorite jeweler’s shop or just the morning coffee stop, consumers are warming up to m-commerce.

“We are in the midst of a dramatic transformation in consumer behavior. In both developed as well as emerging markets in the region, what is changing is nothing less than how consumers interact: with their families, their friends, their communities — and also with businesses. This transformation is due in large part to the continued adoption of mobile devices, which is significantly altering the day-to-day shopping experience, and habits, of consumers, ” says Daniel Cohen, senior VP of emerging payments for MasterCard LAC.

5–10% of Groupon conversions in Latin American happened on mobile devices.

Regionally, according to Ericsson and other sources, major players in Latin America include Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia. Have a look at what more of what researchers have found.

2. Mobile penetration is increasing every year in Latin America

“If we take Latin America as a [single] growing region, it follows the path of other developing countries in terms of mobile penetration,” said Fernando Ballester, who heads up Business Development at Yeeply.

“Like India or China, mobile penetration … is increasing faster each year,” he said. “Today, there are more than 340 million mobile users in Latin America, with Brazil and Mexico leading the race.”

“The market seems to be stabilizing,” Ballester added, regarding Latin Americans and their developing love for buying with mobile. “The prediction for 2017 is 374 million users.”

If Latin America wants to reach a half-billion mobile users, and beyond, however, experts say further growth will take some additional time and effort.

“Data shows that Latin America is still a ‘teen market’ in terms of mobile penetration,” said Ballester.

“For example, Costa Rica has seen a 332% increase in the number of users connecting to the Internet with a tablet or smartphone,” he said. “But that means it was coming from a very low number. And the same goes for more solid countries such as Brazil, Argentina, or Colombia — all of them with more than 200% growth.”

3. Consumers and merchants are hungry for more mobile solutions

As most of our daily activities are becoming streamlined through mobile and digital, consumers and merchants alike are eager for solutions that will make their lives easier. But how advanced can we say m-commerce in Latin American has become?

For answers, take a look at adoption-rate leaders such as Mexico. But also look at how the industry is adapting to — and educating others about — mobile payments, region-wide.

• Mexico’s mobile penetration rate is some 87%, with 20% of those being smartphones, according to OMLIS. That’s helping to drive mobile payments in the country to an anticipated $10.3 billion by the end of 2015. Point is, consumers owning mobile hardware are key to m-commerce rates. They’re the infrastructure that brings about adoption rates in the 31% range.

“Fear of fraud continues to be the principal factor inhibiting the use of Internet as a transactional channel,” according to Easy Solutions’ 2014 reporton Latin American consumers’ views on electronic security. “However, it is possible to change user perceptions about security through the delivery of additional security measures,” the report suggested, citing “educational materials that inform users about how to use those measures effectively.” Latin American m-commerce users’ perceptions of security may well be improving. Forty-three percent told Easy Solutions they think online transactions are safer, circa 2014, as compared to 38% in 2013.

The notion of wasting time looking for ways to withdraw cash, not to mention reducing the chance of losing your money in a mugging, is also part of what’s driving the shift to mobile payments. People are starting to get that message, and it’s happening all over. In countries on the cusp of this phenomenon — Sweden, for instance — m-commerce has driven vendors sales to a 59% increase.

Innovators such as YellowPepper are encouraging merchants to get on the m-commerce wagon as well. As reported recently in the South Florida Business Journal, YellowPepper’s mobile-payment app, Yepex, is already rolling out in Mexico and Colombia, to start. The company is reaching out to merchants throughout the region to create a culture of knowledge around ways that m-commerce can work for them. Examples include merchants being able to push news of sales and special offers to consumers, and then reward loyal customers among their base. There are plans for further expansion throughout Latin America in 2015. Competitors such as Paymentez are following suit.

Banks are also pushing for mobile-commerce expansion throughout the region, “with smartphone apps emerging as the preferred channel for banks seeking to project a more sophisticated image,” as SAP reported, recently.

4. Mobile is driving financial inclusion in Latin America

When we talk about mobile payments in Latin America, we can’t leave out the topic of financial inclusion.

“More than 60% of consumers in Latin America are unbanked,” said Jason Oxman, chief executive officer at the Electronic Transactions Association, “meaning they live in a cash-only economy that denies them opportunities to transact, save for the future, and secure their finances.

“At the same time, mobile-phone penetration is approaching 60% in the region,” he continued, “M-commerce thus presents a unique platform for bringing financial-services access to Latin Americans who desire the financial security and safety that mobile payments — including SMS-based electronic transfers — can offer.”

With all these mobile phones finding their way into the hands of Latin American users, the region is looking at a crucial opportunity. As some markets reach a kind of tipping point — more mobile phones than bank accounts — the opportunity to reach consumers through mobile payments is poised to expand even further … and to even greater benefit.

Building a Strong Financial Portfolio: Having formal credit lines and opening savings accounts (even if you don’t have a traditional bank) are the kind of m-commerce tools that open even more doors for individuals, even if they’re making a small annual income in a distant location. Using the tools of financial inclusion — mobile phones, money cards, etc. — helps empower users to develop even stronger financial futures.

More than Things: Mobile payments can create access to more than just goods and banking services, too. New kinds of insurance emerge, for example, in which many users pool their resources to buy a neighborhood or a community coverage plan together.

And loan-lenders? They can average some 2.5% in returns on micro-loans via m-commerce in many places around the world. That should prove incentive to explore financial inclusion even further in many Latin American locations.

5. Latin America’s bright future in mobile

The romance between Latin America and mobile payments is underway.

Even the days of mistrust may be drawing to a midpoint, a critical crossroads: cautious adoption of mobile tech and mobile commerce seems set to move forward in the region. According to a recent Cisco report, mobile-data growth in Latin America is expected to top some 67% between now and 2017.

If that trend continues, then it brings us to what Omlis’ analysts suggest: Latin American countries stand to become “global leaders in Internet and mobile-payments use within the next five years.”

Infrastructure, opportunities, innovation, and security … that’s the recipe for a buy-button, one that mobile commerce leaders want Latin America to push. It is one that will open doors for mobile users and m-commerce providers — doors of a chapel, as it were — creating a long-wished-for and happy union in the years to come.

Law360, New York (February 11, 2015, 5:27 PM ET) — When eBay Inc. moves forward with its long-awaited plan to spin off its lucrative PayPal Inc. unit, a decision that came after months of activist pressure, the online auction giant will bid the payments processor adieu with a hefty gift — $5 billion in cash, eBay said Wednesday.

Ugali is cornmeal porridge and a staple of the Kenyan diet; it is as Kenyan as M-PESA. Last time my mother was making it, she ran out of cooking gas and texted me frantically to send her money so she could buy gas and finish cooking dinner before it got soggy. I ran to the M-PESA agent near my office, but they did not have float, and then ran from agent to agent trying to buy float, until the ugali had long become uneatable. If you ask any Kenyan they can tell you their own harrowing tale (some much less funny) about trying unsuccessfully to conduct a transaction with an agent due to float issues. Further, recent research like the Intermedia Kenya Wave 1 FII Tracker Surveyon the customer experience with digital finance agents and The HelixInstitute’s Agent Network Accelerator Survey – Kenya Country Report (2013) highlights this as among the top three issues hindering transactions.

Agents without float are perennially frustrating for providers who are constantly making new partnerships and products to bring the amount of time needed and cost incurred in rebalancing down. TheHelix Institute research from across East Africa shows that agents report that rebalancing is fairly quick and easy, so the question remains, what is prohibiting agents from carrying more optimal levels of float? Given my personal frustration and the mounting evidence of this as a systematic issue I set out to interview 50 agents in Kenya as to what was causing this problem.

Some of the answers are quite surprising and necessitate using abehavioural science lens to better understand how agents think about profit optimization and float management. In fact, in some instances, the agent actually has float, and is refusing to do the transaction for other reasons. Understanding these mental frameworks will help providers to better address the quality of customer service their agent networks are providing.

Agent Transactional Revenue Honing

Some M-PESA agents choose to target the maximum revenues per transaction instead of the more prudent strategy of maximizing profits over time. The amount of revenue earned is based on the value of the transaction conducted. Values are arranged in tiers so that all values in that tier yield the same amount of revenue. Hence, agents only agree to conduct deposit transactions closest to the tier’s lower limits, informing a customer that that is the maximum amount of e-float they have to transact. For instance, an agent speaking about the value tier from Ksh.3,501 to an upper limit of Ksh.5,000 explained:

Most customers are then left to abide by the amounts quoted by the agents and not fully accessing deposit services that address their needs. Depending on the customer needs, some opt to search for other agents while others end up splitting their deposit transactions through multiple agents. Providers need to better communicate to agents the effects of focusing on revenue maximization per transaction as customers are inconvenienced by the resulting limitations on access to e-float, and makes them prone to completely losing their customers in the long run.

Agent Default Stickiness

There are other agents who opt not to increase the float they hold despite the growth in the demand for digital finance transactions over time. While it may seem simple to decide to invest more in a business that is noticeably growing, the truth is it is not. The proprietor must weigh increasing float vs. all the other invest opportunities they have in the other products in their store. Even if they did decide float was a prudent investment, how much more should they buy and how might that affect the risk of getting defrauded? These fundamental decisions can be complex enough to drive agents to just stick with their default amount – the original amount required by the provider to start their agency business. In which case, agents report rationing the float they have for their most loyal customers. Meaning they will reserve float for regular customers, and deny other transactions even when they have the float to make them.

To address this, providers or master agents may push such agents to grow by automatically increasing the default. There could be percentage growth mandates for agents with clearly defined timelines for instance 20% growth every year, which would aid in determining the progressive defaults over time. Agents also need to be more knowledgeable on risk mitigation and risk reporting to reduce their concerns with facing risk or fraud.

Agent Transaction Pooling

While some agents opt to maximize revenue by transaction, others try to limit volatility in their earnings by forming groups with other agents and pooling their risk. Group members help each other by lending each other small amounts of money to make change for customers, referring customers to each other, and where all the group members are under one master agent, the agents take turns going to the bank branch for rebalancing.

The group support also extends to slow days, when specific agents are not doing many transactions. They will communicate it to the group, and other members, even when they have float, will turn away customers, directing them to the agent needing more transactions that day. This helps ensure that revenues are more reliable on a daily basis for everyone in the group. It also makes sense, since it will mean agents will be much more likely to have in sync needs for rebalancing, which they benefit from doing together as well. Providers must recognize this need for predictable revenue streams, and the gains agents experience from pooling the work of rebalancing, and therefore provide superior solutions for them, or risk having this system persist.

Addressing Agents’ Mental Frameworks

The above are just initial insights, and so while these trends were clearly observed, we are still unclear of the prevalence of them on a national scale. These practices indicate a clear disconnect between the mental frameworks of providers who are trying to facilitate rebalancing and agents who have float and are still denying transactions. Probably the scariest realisation here is providers cannot see these problems on their virtual dashboards, because the agents actually have float, they are just not always willing to use it, and therefore customer service will continue to suffer. These issues highlight the importance of regular agent monitoring and research techniques like mystery shopping that will give better data on the prevalence of these issues, and cost effective solutions to address them.

]]>http://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/the-i-dont-have-enough-float-quandary/feed/0KPMG: Retail Banking Approaching ‘e-book moment’, Describes Bitcoin as ‘The Internet of Money’http://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/kpmg-retail-banking-approaching-e-book-moment-describes-bitcoin-as-the-internet-of-money/
http://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/kpmg-retail-banking-approaching-e-book-moment-describes-bitcoin-as-the-internet-of-money/#commentsTue, 03 Feb 2015 22:37:18 +0000http://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/?p=3226Continue Reading]]>Another week of Bitcoin stabilization brought a slew of news to the market, with a major M&A media deal, a $75 million investment into Coinbase, all of which was happening just before an interesting KPMG report.

While the banks are open to safely start buying European bonds, as the European Central Bank has become the 4th major institution to indulge in quantitative easing, KPMG revealed in a report that the disruptive potential of Bitcoin for retail banking was a serious matter.

At the same time, Coinbase secured a solid $75 million dollar investment, while bitcoin prices hovered around $240 over the weekend, marking a second week running of higher prices.

Other notable investors include the New York Stock Exchange, USAA Bank, BBVA Ventures and Japanese telecom giant DoCoMo. Former Citigroup CEO, Vikram Pandit also personally invested.

The mix of investors is impressive considering their prominence and the fact that for several, it is their first Bitcoin-related investment ever.

It is the largest investment ever in a Bitcoin company, which in the case of Coinbase, also supports the highest number of merchants and consumer wallets in the industry. In total, $106 million has been poured into Coinbase to date, also a record for the industry.

Read the full story here.KPMG Report Upbeat on Bitcoin’s Potential to Disrupt Retail Banking

An 18-page report by KPMG’s UK banking division explores how the retail banking world is ripe for gradual disruption and how some emerging systems can make this happen.

The review is well-summarized in a section discussing “the three pronged attack on retail banking.” The three major services provided by banks–deposits, payments and lending–are each being challenged by new approaches.

Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin are categorized as challenging the payments world. PayPal is considered to be a challenger for payments and deposits, while peer-to-peer schemes and “digital banks” are making inroads into the lending space.

Suppose on one quiet morning eighteen months from now, a previously unknown bug paralyzes the Bitcoin protocol. Most transactions on the network fail, and worse yet, sophisticated attackers exploit the bug and go on a hacking spree, draining wallets of their balances en masse.

The community is taken by surprise, particularly because core developers have just completed a string of enhancements. It turns out that the latest version of wallet software inadvertently introduced a flaw not previously present.

BTC Media LLC, the parent company of the “yBitcoin” magazine, has acquired Bitcoin Magazine from Coin Publishing LLC.

Bitcoin Magazine was launched by Mihai Alisie and Ethereum co-founder, Vitalik Buterin. It published its first issue in May 2012 and thereafter joined forces with Coin Publishing LLC to produce 22 more. It is mailed to subscribers worldwide, sold at Barnes & Noble bookstores and published online at www.bitcoinmagazine.com.

The FBI has announced the arrest of another key player from the Silk Road 2.0 marketplace. Richard Farrell, operating under the name of “DoctorClu” on the website, was arrested in Seattle. He was charged with conspiracy to distribute heroin, methamphetamine and cocaine.

Farrell was allegedly one of the several administrators for the site, approving new staff and vendors and organizing a denial of service attack on a competitor.

Silk Road 2.0 launched in November 2013 to replace the original Silk Road, which was shut down weeks earlier and its alleged mastermind arrested. The 2.0 version sought to revive the anonymous sale of illegal goods with bitcoin.

– See more at: http://forexmagnates.com/bitcoin-picks-kpmg-bitcoin-disrupting-retail-banking-coinbase-secures-75-mln/#sthash.dibwi7Cv.dpuf

]]>http://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/kpmg-retail-banking-approaching-e-book-moment-describes-bitcoin-as-the-internet-of-money/feed/0PayPal [Subsidiary Braintree] Activates Bitcoin Payments for US Merchantshttp://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/braintree-activates-bitcoin-payments-for-us-merchants/
http://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/braintree-activates-bitcoin-payments-for-us-merchants/#commentsTue, 03 Feb 2015 19:57:53 +0000http://www.serviciosfinancierosmoviles.com/?p=3223Continue Reading]]>UPDATE (22nd Jan 20:10 GMT): Braintree has responded to questions about US merchant adoption of its development kit and clarified that customers can only pay in bitcoin through a Coinbase account.

Merchants who use the payments software platform Braintree in the US can enable bitcoin payments through Coinbase starting today.

Braintree said that it had integrated Coinbase into its software development kit, which it callsv.zero. This means that merchants who use the kit can now enable bitcoin payments quickly, Braintree said.

“Bitcoin is growing in popularity for consumer and merchants alike … the number of companies both small and large working to enable bitcoin acceptance is on the rise,” Braintree said in a blog post announcing the move.

Braintree, a subsidiary of PayPal, wouldn’t reveal the number of US merchants who use its development kit, saying only that it has seen “widespread adoption” of the software tool since it was released in July. The integration will require customers to have Coinbase accounts in order to pay merchants in bitcoin.

Braintree had 85.7 million cards on file to use its single-click or repeat purchase feature in the third quarter of last year, according to PayPal’s latest quarterly financial report.

Seeking a ‘seamless’ experience

First announced in September, the integration process required more time than expected in order to create a “seamless” experience for merchants, Coinbase said in a statement.

“We believe the extra time spent perfecting this experience will make merchants and consumers alike happy,” a spokesperson said.

Braintree counts companies like Uber, Airbnb and OpenTable among its clients. Further, it allows merchants to accept payments from credit and debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay and its mobile payments wallet Venmo.

Braintree chief executive Bill Ready is known for his optimism about bitcoin’s future as a payments method, telling CoinDesk in November that his firm is working to take bitcoin mainstream.

Bitcoin, the virtual currency that was once the talk of the financial world, has been taking a beating over the last year with the price tumbling downward.

Now two of the biggest boosters of the virtual currency, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, are trying to firm up support by creating the first regulated Bitcoin exchange for American customers — what they are calling the Nasdaq of Bitcoin.

The brothers, who received $65 million in Facebook shares and cash in 2008 after jousting with its founder, Mark Zuckerberg, have hired engineers from top hedge funds, enlisted a bank and engaged regulators with the aim of opening their exchange — namedGemini, Latin for twins — in the coming months.

The exchange, which the twins have financed themselves, is a risky bet, given that the virtual currency industry has been a target of hackers and has faced existential questions about its legitimacy. But the brothers are betting that the currency will be able to rise again if it follows the same playbook as the more established financial industry.

“Right now we have to build the infrastructure,” Tyler Winklevoss said. “You have to walk before you run.”

Since being brought into existence in 2009, by a creator going by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto, Bitcoin has become a technology and financial industry phenomenon. Many major Bitcoin companies, however, were founded by people with little previous financial experience. Bitcoins themselves are stored on a decentralized database run by the currency’s users, and can be bought and sold by anybody.

The twins have a personal interest in seeing Bitcoin succeed. They amassed a small fortune of Bitcoins, starting in 2012, which has declined in value recently. They also have been working with regulators since 2013 to create the first exchange-traded fund holding Bitcoins, for which they are awaiting approval.

They are part of a broader group of wealthy investors and entrepreneurs who have been staking their reputation on the belief that the Bitcoin technology will rise to become more than just a speculative bubble, and will provide new ways of transferring and holding money.

But exchanges, where traders can meet to buy and sell Bitcoins for dollars and euros, have proved to be the biggest vulnerability for Bitcoin.

The first major Bitcoin exchange, Mt. Gox in Japan, lost hundreds of millions of dollars and went bankrupt last year. Earlier this month, a security breach at another prominent exchange in Europe, Bitstamp, was the latest reminder of the risks, and helped push the price of a Bitcoin below $200 from a peak above $1,200 in late 2013.

The Winklevosses themselves were swept up in the scandals when the chief executive of a Bitcoin company they had invested in was arrested on charges related to money laundering in early 2014 — a result of activities that happened before they invested.

The twins say none of this has dented their faith in the promise of the technology — they say they continue to hold every Bitcoin they ever purchased — and underscores why a reliable, regulated exchange is needed.

“The A Team wasn’t there,” Tyler Winklevoss said. “There was a problem here and it needs to be solved.”

The Gemini staff is working at a few rows of desks in the Winklevoss Capital offices near Madison Square Park in Manhattan, which has dry-erase boards on the walls covered in math equations and strategic scribbles, and the requisite bean bag chair.

Their chief compliance officer, Michael Breu, was previously at the hedge fund giant Bridgewater Associates, where he was head of information security in the research department. At Gemini, Mr. Breu works closely with the chief security officer, Cem Paya, who previously held the same position at the apartment rental site Airbnb.

They and a staff of a dozen others have been creating Gemini’s security infrastructure and trading engine from scratch, and already have a test model of the exchange running. They are planning to be ready to open the exchange as soon as they win regulatory approval from New York state’s top financial regulator, Benjamin M. Lawsky, the superintendent of the state’s Department of Financial Services.

His office has been leading the effort to regulate virtual currencies in the United States, and is introducing what Mr. Lawsky has referred to as a BitLicense for virtual currency companies. He said recently that he hoped to approve the first companies early this year. A person briefed on the matter confirmed that the office was holding discussions on the Winklevoss effort.

The twins have brought on a leading law firm on financial regulations, Katten Muchin Rosenman, to help win regulatory approval.

Their close cooperation with regulators has also helped them win the thing that has proved the most elusive for Bitcoin companies — a bank account with an American bank. According to documents viewed by The New York Times, on condition that only their general outline be described in this article, the Winklevosses have an agreement with a bank chartered in New York to handle the dollars moving in and out of customer accounts.

Cooperation with regulators has divided the virtual currency world. Bitcoin was founded, in part, with the intention of creating a currency outside the control of governments. The twins have placed themselves firmly in the camp of those who believe that Bitcoin will survive only if it has regulatory oversight.

“Our philosophy is to ask for permission, not forgiveness,” Cameron Winklevoss said.

The biggest Bitcoin exchanges today are all overseas, in China, Hong Kong, London and Eastern Europe, which has not helped instill confidence in some American users.

Most of the exchanges were started at an earlier point in Bitcoin’s development when there was less focus on security and regulations. Bitcoins are particularly vulnerable to hackers because all that someone needs to spend the money in a Bitcoin account is the password, or private key.

The security experts hired by the Winklevoss twins have, like many Bitcoin companies, been focusing on ways to keep the private keys — a mix of letters and numbers — in multiple locations where they are offline and physically guarded.

For the actual trading software, the twins brought on a programmer from the hedge fund Two Sigma, who is building a system that can be used by both small investors and institutional firms that want direct access to the trading system.

The twins are also still moving forward with their exchange-traded fund, set to trade on the Nasdaq stock market under the ticker COIN when approved.

All of these ventures could amount to nothing if the recent decline in confidence continues.

The last major Bitcoin start-up the brothers backed, BitInstant, collapsed in the summer of 2013 before the founder was arrested. After seeing the mistakes made by others, the twins said they wanted to do things on their own.

“This time around we are betting on ourselves,” Tyler Winklevoss said.